Casino-crime link disputed

Iowa service calls mainly for minor incidents

12:13 AM,
May 5, 2013

Security guard Steve Welding of Mount Pleasant watches over the floor Thursday at the Riverside Casino and Golf Resort in Riverside. The Washington County Sheriff's Department added a deputy when the casino opened in 2006.

Written by

Jeff Eckhoff

Iowa's newest casinos have generated some additional work for local enforcement agencies, but the gambling establishments are not the cesspools of crime and bad behavior some had predicted, a Des Moines Register review of crime statistics and calls for service shows.

"I was one of the people who were pushing not to have it here because I thought it would be a major problem," said Lyon County Sheriff Stewart Vander Stoep, whose 10-officer department serves an area in northwest Iowa that includes Grand Falls Casino in Larchwood, which opened in 2011.